"Discontinued item" A sellers foolishness.

I've never seen so many discontinued items/sold out in any industry as I have than with BJD dolls. It's truly mind boggling and incredibly annoying for a customer who has cash in hand looking at products he or she wants but is barred from purchasing.

A great deal of sellers will discontinue for the following reasons (please add if I missed any)

-When the product becomes too difficult to make anymore that you no longer wish to make it at any price, nor for anyone. (Very Rare this happens.)
-When the product becomes so difficult to make such that it could not be offered at a price which you believe is reasonable to buyers. (this is naivete on behalf of seller. Who knows what a buyer will pay)
-When raw materials for a product run out and cannot be substituted. (Rare, but does happen)
-When a product does poorly and has little interest (this is one of the most common reasons for most companies)

Generally sellers are under the very false assumption that in making a product limited they'll garner greater sales for a shorter period of time and this will justify turning people away for years following due to the item becoming discontinued. This is simply the idea of supply and demand. If you make the supply scare for arbitrary reasons, the demand will go up. And it will for a short period of time. But when the arbitrary amount of supply is pulled, then you lose countless following sales. Take note of the diamond industry. They purposefully make the supply scare so the demand is high. They hold back diamonds so as not to flood the market and lower their value. However they never refuse to have diamonds on the market as that would be foolish. They'll always make sure there are diamonds available to those who wish to pay a great deal for them. This way they always make money and people always get something that has value. (Since diamonds cannot be easily found elsewhere, the value is more or less real, based on availability).

I see this simply as a lack of imagination regarding marketing. There are so many countless ways to make a product immediately attractive without having to place a shelf life on it. Sellers could easily add special bonus accessories for the first X-amount of purchases made by customers. Or they could have signed certificates from the artist for the first X-amount of purchases. Even more the price could simply skyrocket after the first X-amount of dolls have been sold. Lastly they could sell the doll in some fashion of OEM state where it only comes as a bare doll, no custom makeup, accessories, etc. There are so many ways of doing this without punishing the customer. And really if you insist on discontinuing a doll, to leave it up on the website where you refuse purchase really is punishing the customer. If you really feel the need to tout your ability as a doll manufacturer, then the right thing to do would be to simply put those pictures in a gallery that is not part of any shopping experience. That way if people see these pictures they realize that these are prior works and they are not going to be let down thinking they can purchase something only to find out at checkout they are barred.

If anyone knows why doll mfgr do this nonsense I'd be interested in hearing. I can't see any legitimate reason for doing this. It just looks like sloppy marketing, poor customer service, and failure to understand how the customer sees discontinued products in a shopping environment.

I'm a business owner myself. The only time I discontinue a product is when the sales drop off to nothing. I'll clearance the poorly performing product out and when it's all sold out I discontinue it by taking it off the site completely. I don't even have pics of it except in a "previously sold" gallery on facebook which is not even on my shopping website. The only other time I discontinue a product is when I get so annoyed with making it that I really don't want to make it at any price and if I were to set a price comisserate with my frustration I would top out the marketplace ten fold. And these are not one of a kind pieces of art I sell, unlike dolls, where you literally could ask several times the previous asked for price and people would pay for it if they believe it has become more rare, or if they realize they missed the opportunity when they were selling much faster and cheaper.

Hopefully some sellers will read this and wean themselves off from this very antiquated business ideology that is an utter flop with customers as well as sellers.

I should also mention that I do custom work. So if I get that customer who expresses interest in a product I haven't made for some time, I'll still shake off the dust and make it for them. Of course it will be quite a bit more expensive since it's not something I routinely make anymore, nor even want to make, but in doing so I make good profit and the customer gets something they can't readily get anywhere else. So really nothing should ever be truly discontinued if the ability to make it still exists.

 

Very well said, I completely agree. I'm guessing a lot of the businesses involved in bjd, even some of the larger ones, don't understand a lot of the basic tenets of customer service and business acumen. I wonder how often they even look at their own sites to see the products as the customers do. If they did, they would, as you suggested, understand how annoying some things can be when surfing. The last thing you want to do as a seller is turn away people hungry to purchase.

 

The casting issue is a rather non-issue unless they're doing some casting process I've never heard of, but I assume these dolls are all cast in silicone molds. Silicone molds can last anywhere from 100-150 pours. After that you can make a new mold from the original. You can make molds off the original until the end of days. Making a mold is not a big deal. These are not complex objects in the least. I've seen complex parts that have 4, 5, 6 and even more parts of the mold due to all the undercuts. The human body just don't have that much undercut. New molds could be made in a few days at most, even for all the pieces. And not all molds wear out at the same rate. A mold that has a very easy to remove piece like a forearm might get hundreds of casts out of it while something like a hand mold where the resin piece really has to be yanked out of there might not last as long due to wear. That's hardly an issue. If anyone complains about having to remake molds from the master then they can cry me a river; they should see what I have to do at times --Reweld jigs and support equipment to make tools. Most of these dolls companies don't ship the doll immediately anyway, usually takes 30-60 days so they are casting each doll per customer, so the argument that they can't have a lot of these sitting on the shelves is nonsense as most don't. They're making each order at a time which is also rather nonsensical as you should always have at least one or two in stock that are the basic bare bones model of any product and from there are added to or customized. And if people say they can't do that because the company is too small, then that means you absolutely have too many products. There's no excuse to not have an inventory of at least one always sitting in a box of each model in a product lineup you are intending to sell.

Also if your company is very small, that's more reason to not have 50 dolls and discontinue 45 of them. If your company is small you should make 10 dolls and have them always in stock, ESPECIALLY if they are popular + good sellers and people are continually asking about purchasing them.

Also it takes a considerable amount of time for resin cast parts to expire, especially considering they'll store them in boxes not out in the hot sunlight day after day. So that's a moot issue. My analogy to diamonds wasn't regarding shelf life but rather availability/scarcity. Diamonds are way more scarce and way more expensive then resin.

All of these above are non-issues. Running out of some rare material, now that's an issue, but those kinds of things should be thought about beforehand.


I think Layn hit the nail on the head. It's mentality that drives this business practice. It's the idea that if you make something limited that people will dive in and devour it at an amazing speed. In fact sellers wish to manufacture the fear that if the customer doesn't purchase it immediately then they'll never be able to have it ever again. Also dolls are impulse buys, so they probably feel like if they put a doll up indefinitely they'll get watchers and not buyers, which can happen. But if you have a limited edition product, it will never become a best seller, it will never follow the ideology of a chicken in every pot and that's how most companies grow big. That's why Mattel makes a hundred million $9.99 dolls and not 20 $900.00 dolls. Obviously sellers in this genre can't keep up with a large volume, hence why you leave the product up and let its popularity spread over time and create on going income over many years, rather then being done with it in a few months. Every entrepreneur knows that you never want to sell out of any product that still has some demand in the market place. And that's why I said even on products I discontinue for my business, I'll still make them. So it might have the appearance of scarcity, but in reality I'll still make the item for the person (via email communication) off the radar. Turning down a sale, now that's the worst kind of business you can be in.

Also I think most of these small companies come down with newproductitis. That's where you firmly believe if you are not making a new product every month that you're going to fall behind your competition and eventually go out of business. With most companies this is a totally unwarranted fear and often ends up bankrupting companies because they're so busy looking to make new things, they outspend themselves and ignore bread and butter products. When you offer custom dolls that are available for customization then you don't need to make them anymore limited then that. You're already the only person on the planet who can make them, adding more scarcity to that equation just shoots yourself in the foot and obviously turns away customers who were looking to throw money at you.